A PORTRAIT OF THE JERSEY MASS KILLER AS AN OLD MAN

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Just after breakfast on Sept. 6, 1949, Howard B. Unruh - a brooding, dark-eyed veteran of World War II - loaded his souvenir German Luger and stepped into the neighborhood shoemaker's shop here to begin a lethal agenda he had set for himself the night before.

''I had leveled the gun at him, neither of us said nothing, and I pulled the trigger,'' Mr. Unruh told a psychiatrist a month later. ''He had a funny look on his face, staggered back, and fell to the floor. I realized then he was still alive, so I fired into his head. I left hurriedly and went next door to the barber shop, and found him cutting a little boy's hair. The barber saw me with a gun and dodged around the barber chair, making it difficult for me to get a clear shot, but I finally hit him, walked over, and then shot into his head.''

In 20 minutes he murdered 13 people, the 6-year-old boy in the barber shop among them, and wounded three others. Some of the victims had just wandered into his frenzy; the rest he had marked for execution.

He was indicted but judged mentally incompetent to stand trial. For the last 32 years, he has been held in the Vroom Building for the criminally insane at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. A Rare Look

Now, unexpectedly, detailed information that provides a rare look at Mr. Unruh during his confinement has become part of the public record. A court appeal of his murder case is to be heard at 10 A.M. Tuesday before a three-judge panel in Trenton, and attached to that appeal are more than a hundred pages of psychiatric records - which by state law are supposed to be sealed. They include his full confession. The papers became public through an oversight.

What emerges is the profile of a 61-year-old man who, according to a 1980 psychiatric report, ''is suffering from a malignant, progressively deteriorating schizophrenic illness.'' It continues: ''Over the years, his mental condition has deteriorated greatly. His physical condition has also deteriorated and he has aged far beyond what would be expected merely by the number of years that have passed.''

He has come to depend on institutional care for his survival, the report says. The court papers raise questions about the resolution of his case. And there is a debate about what to do with Mr. Unruh. Everyone involved with the case believes that he will spend the rest of his life in an institution, but the issue is where. Stooped and Timid

The Prosecutor's office in Camden and some Camden residents insist that Mr. Unruh is still a threat and should continue to be held behind the bars and barbed wire of the Vroom Building. But doctors and his lawyer, James H. Klein, the Public Defender, say that a stooped and timid old man who walks in circles and hears voices is no longer a danger to society. They believe he should be allowed to transfer to another state psychiatric hospital where patients live in cottages and rooms instead of cells.

In September 1980, a Superior Court judge ruled that Mr. Unruh's constitutional right to a speedy trial had been violated, and the court dismissed the murder and assault indictments pending against him. The Camden County Prosecutor's office appealed the decision.

In 1979, Mr. Unruh asked to be transferred from the maximum security Vroom Building to a minimum security state psychiatric hospital in Marlboro, close to the home of his 82-year-old mother, Freda.

''I think if we don't transfer him he'll die shortly,'' the Trenton hospital's administrator, Harvey Musikoff, said at a closed hearing in 1979. ''I think if we don't transfer him before his mother expires that he will go downhill very rapidly. I think the environment, coupled with the fact that there's a great distance between him and his mother, exacerbates this slow physical deterioration.'' 'More Skepticism'

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But the Prosecutor's office, which says it echoes the views of the Camden community, opposes the move and, by pressing to have criminal charges against Mr. Unruh reinstated, could make it difficult for him to be transferred.

''The concerns for the welfare and comfort of the patient pale when you consider what he has done,'' said Dennis G. Wixted, an assistant prosecutor. ''I don't think a less restrictive setting is appropriate. We invest a great deal in the judgments of psychiatrists, but there should be more skepticism as to their ability to predict future behavior.''

No one, of course, had predicted the events of Sept. 6, 1949, but after the murders an extensive psychiatric report revealed that the patient was ''a master of suppressed rage'' who harbored ''a smoldering anger, resentment and challenge that never subsided.''

After the war, he became ''increasingly silent, difficult, aloof and enigmatic,'' according to the 1949 report. He felt his neighbors were persecuting and belittling him, ''that they were thinking of him as a homosexual.'' The night before the murders, he made a list of the people he planned to kill, Mr. Unruh said in his confession.

''While he was well aware of the possibility of being executed for his crime,'' the report said, ''his apathetic reaction to this and other future possibilities was that of a detached observer rather than an emotional participant.''

Today, according to the records, ''he spends most of his time walking in a circle.'' ''He believes he is being treated through the television by psychiatrists,'' the records say, ''he talks about the Oedipus complex, unwanted thoughts in his mind and feeling that people are talking behind his back and trying to harm him.''

But, according to the previously sealed testimony of Dr. Musikoff, the Trenton hospital administrator, ''he has the best single track record'' of any patient in the Vroom Building. ''We have released hundreds and hundreds of people with a track record that can't hold a candlestick to him,'' Dr. Musikoff said in the 1979 testimony. ''I think if he can't leave, it's for other than psychiatric reasons and security reasons.'' 'Threat on Safety'

''There's really nothing political about it,'' Mr. Wixted, the assistant prosecutor, said recently. ''The seriousness of this man's insanity imposes a threat on the safety of the community.''

Dr. Musikoff confirmed that in 1979 he had recommended that Mr. Unruh be transferred to Marlboro, but he did not effect the transfer even though he had the power to do so.

''There was a great deal of opposition,'' he said. ''I had letters from around the state.'' Now, if the appeals court upholds the dismissal of the indictments and if Mr. Unruh's doctors still believe he should be transferred, Dr. Musikoff says he ''will pursue it.''

A version of this article appears in print on March 8, 1982, on Page B00002 of the National edition with the headline: A PORTRAIT OF THE JERSEY MASS KILLER AS AN OLD MAN. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe